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If you’re looking for cheap and reliable online storage—who isn’t?—you can score a year 20GB of online storage from Amazon for under a buck. How? Read on as we highlight the perks of Amazon’s Cloud Drive and how to get nearly-free storage.

Sound too good to be true? 20 GB for a whole year for 89 cents? Amazon is in super promotion mode right now and willing to eat their costs to get your attention. Let’s take a peek at the new services they’ve rolled out and how you can benefit from their zealous promotional tactics.

What is Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player?

Amazon Cloud Drive is Amazon’s offering in the world of cloud-based storage. One of their best known competitors in this arena is the popular Dropbox. A free Amazon Cloud Drive account, no promotional tricks necessary, will net you 5GB of free storage. That’s on the generous end of the standard accounts offered by nearly all cloud-storage providers.

Where things get interesting is with the introduction of Amazon’s Cloud Player. The Cloud Player works from the web, from your desktop, and from Android devices. Any music you store in your Cloud Drive is automatically a part of your Cloud Player and you can use it to build playlists, listen to as singles, and enjoy it like you enjoy your music anywhere else. If you purchase music from Amazon it is automatically stored in your Cloud Drive account and, this is a great deal, it doesn’t count against your storage limit (MP3s you import from your computer into your Cloud Drive do, however).

Amazon is aggressively promoting their Cloud Drive and Cloud Player service in a bid to establish themselves as a major player in the Android ecosystem. A significant number of Android devices already come with the Amazon MP3 application, all it takes to turn that Android device into a member of the Amazon system is a simple login. Between their recent investment in an Android app store and now this music-centered push with the Cloud Player, it looks like Amazon is investing themselves in Android for good.

Now that we’re up to speed on what’s going on with the Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, let’s take a look at how you can score a year’s worth of 20GB storage for under a buck.

Taking Advantage for Amazon’s Almost-Free-Storage Promotion

Right now Amazon is offering a killer promotion to up the adoption rate of their Cloud Player. If you buy a single MP3 album from Amazon between now and the end of the year you automatically get upgraded to the 20GB storage plan. The going rate for the 20GB plan is reasonable as is ($20 per year or a mere $1.67 a month), but getting a year for next to nothing is an even better deal. At first glance we assumed that you would have to buy an album above a certain price point (say, at least $10-15). It turns out you can buy any album and you’ll receive the automatic upgrade. Any album, you say? Yes, any album from the entire Amazon music store collection.

We scanned the music store looking for something cheap and interesting (as tempting as it would be to buy The Greatest Hits of the Midwest Polka Kings just to get some free storage we were trying to at least pick an album we’d listen to). We opted to purchase Rain for Sleeping and Relaxation, a soothing sleep/relaxation album by Joe Baker. It’s a one track album that’s over an hour long, nothing but soothing rain storms to help you focus while you work or fall asleep. The album price? A mere $0.89—you can see the listing for the album and the purchase price in the screenshot above. We purchased it and Amazon immediately told us all about our automatic upgrade to the enhanced Cloud Drive account. No sweating or searching for the right link necessary! You’ll see a prompt button that encourages you to launch the Cloud Player that looks like so:

Click on the “Launch Amazon Cloud Player” button to navigate to your Cloud Player and accompanying Cloud Drive. What does the Cloud Player look like? Like this, a simple and easy to navigate web-based music player.

That’s nice and all, but what about the real reason you’re likely even buying the album? Let’s take a look at the Cloud Drive. It too has a simple interface that lends itself to easy organization and file uploading:

That’s it! Click the “Upload Files” button to start uploading files from your computer. You’re now the proud owner of a new 20GB Cloud Drive with nearly-free storage for the next 365 days.

Have a tip, trick, or favorite application for taking advantage of Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player service? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Jason Fitzpatrick is a warranty-voiding DIYer who spends his days cracking opening cases and wrestling with code so you don't have to. If it can be modded, optimized, repurposed, or torn apart for fun he's interested (and probably already at the workbench taking it apart). You can follow him on Twitter if you'd like.

No UK either. I’m getting fed up with Amazon offering all their digital services to the US only, I can’t use their Android marketplace, I can’t use their on-line movie rentals and now this. Is my smelly foreign money not good enough for them?

I wonder how many people remember that all this was fully available from Lala.com until Apple bought and buried them. And Lala only charged 10 cents per track if you just streamed it. Unlimited tracks, unlimited listening, no subscription fee.

Just an fyi, there are a bunch of $.89 albums. Including Antoine Dodson’s “Bed Intruder” song. There are several different copies of it. You want the one that shows it is a full album. It is by Antoine Dodson and the Gregory Brothers.

– Purchase an MP3 album from the Amazon MP3 Store by 11:59 PM PST on December 31, 2011.
– If you qualify for this offer and either have not signed up for Amazon Cloud Drive or have the 5GB Amazon Cloud Drive plan, you will be automatically eligible for the 20 GB plan for one year from the date of your MP3 album purchase. Unless you set your account to auto-renew to a paid plan, the 20 GB plan will revert to a free plan one year from the date of your MP3 album purchase.
– If your Amazon Cloud Drive account is already at 20 GB or higher when you qualify for this offer, the offer will be saved to your account as a $20 credit toward any future Amazon Cloud Drive plan fees you may incur at the time your plan renews or at the time you upgrade your plan. If you elect to downgrade your plan to a free plan at the time of renewal, your upgrade offer will be applied towards the 20 GB plan at that time.
– Note: Once we process your order, which could take up to 3 hours, your promotion will be applied and you will receive email notification that your Cloud Drive storage plan has been updated..

Thanks for the tip … I started to buy the RAIN album (believe it or not, I have several like it for meditations), then saw another one I liked and ended up buying about $12 in downloads (got the 20GB storage though!). I should never go to a shopping site in the am when my resistance is low!

Hey Guys , I just wanted to say Thanks for this great tip. I read it just a 10 minutes ago, I rushed over to Amazon and did it. I started my free 5gig acct. Then I bought an album, and POW ! I got upgraded to 20gig.
Thanks again, very much.

I just tried to get the “free upgrade” from Amazon and was told that I needed to buy a whole album for the upgrade to be honored. The customer service person was adamant about his information, then told me he had to refer my account to some engineering group.

I also mentioned that I received the information through your site and their web page shows the upgrade on your account. Let see what happens in the next 24 hours.

I just did this and it worked great. Bought your recommended album and now uploading a bunch. Only 22+ hours for the remaining 3,100 some-odd MP3s. Hmmm, wondering about upgrading to higher storage to save all 500+ State Of Trance w/ Armin Van Buurens. Need 37GB just for them!

5.2.Our Right to Access Your Files. You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files: to provide you with technical support and address technical issues; to investigate compliance with the terms of this Agreement, enforce the terms of this Agreement and protect the Service and its users from fraud or security threats; or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with applicable law.

>> I also am not seeing the bump, sent a note to CS we’ll see what they say.

So I finally broke down and called them ( they have an MP3 Cust. Service dept, btw). Anyway, you have to be sure to click “Buy Album…” and not “Buy Track…” or Buy MP3..”, etc. Even though I bought the mp3 above I probably hit the wrong button. I am going to buy another ensure I click the right buttons and see what happens…

”Buy an MP3 Album and Upgrade to 20 GB of Cloud Drive Storage for Free has ended.”

I’ll stick with SkyDrive and SpiderOak!

DID YOU KNOW?

Pink flamingos, of the plastic kitsch lawn-decoration kind and not the real live item, are the official bird of the city of Madison, Wisconsin; the plastic lawn ornament was so designated in response to a lighthearted prank in 1979 wherein students covered the University of Wisconsin’s Bascom Hill with over one thousand of them.